Optical fiber connectors already exist for connecting optical fibers. They comprise two plugs into which the fibers to be connected are slid, and a third member or connection part which is interposed between the plugs and which enables continuity to be obtained in the light guide. An essential characteristic of optical fiber connectors is that they are intended to be assembled and disassembled at will by the user. This essential practical advantage is obtained at the cost of non-negligible technical complexity, as is well known to the person skilled in the art.
The present invention relates to apparatus of a different type which is not intended to provide a connection between optical fibers which can be released at will, but rather it is intended to provide a stable connection which may be modified from time to time as required. By analogy with electricity, the present invention may be considered to provide a kind of optical fiber connection strip, whereas the above-mentioned connectors correspond in contrast to the various families of releasable connectors.
In this respect, preferred embodiments of the present invention provide connection means which are cheaper and easier to use than such connectors, and which are particularly applicable for installing complete distribution networks using optical fibers, for example. In such a network, multi-fiber cables need to be connected or to be divided in cabinets or chests for making junctions or branch connections, thereby enabling the network operator to set up and subsequently to modify connections to various subscribers.
It may be observed that an optical fiber connector can also perform this function. However, a connector suffers from the technical complexity already mentioned, which naturally leads to greater cost. Further, optical fiber connectors include two parts which are permanently fixed to each of the fibers to be connected thereby.
Similarly, it is often useful in a laboratory to have simple, fast and effective means for making fiber-to-fiber connections, where fitting a complete connector would be slow, expensive and not removable from each of the fiber ends concerned, as mentioned above.
In this context, preferred embodiments of the invention also solve the tricky problems of connecting fibers end-to-end in a simple manner, which problems are essentially due to the very small size and to the fragility of the fibers. The present trend is for the central or "core" part optical fibers to be made to even smaller diameters.
Another difficulty which preferred embodiments of the present invention solve is related to the fact that the fibers to be connected may have slightly different diameters due to manufacturing tolerances, to coming from different suppliers, of just to coming from different batches. Connections should be of substantially constant quality in spite of such variations.